Marine veteran haunted by memories

George Vogel drove his Ford pickup truck toward a group of people he thought were the infamous Westboro Baptist protesters.

The 62-year-old Omahan's trigger finger rested on a can of potent pepper spray that can cause temporary blindness and vomiting. His grandson rode in the passenger seat.

But what Vogel saw as he leaned out the driver's side window and twice sprayed the crowd outside the Saturday funeral of Marine Staff Sgt. Michael Bock is a 40-year-old memory he can't shake, his wife says.

In the memory, Vogel is himself a young Marine. He has just climbed off the ship that has brought him back to the United States from a brutal tour of duty in Vietnam. And he encounters a group of anti-war protesters, young adults his own age, waving signs and screaming at him.

“He kept saying, ‘All I could think of was when I got off the boat,'” Marlene Vogel said Monday of the lone phone conversation she has had with her husband since he was jailed Saturday on suspicion of 16 counts of misdemeanor assault.

The charges stem from the 16 people — none of whom are believed to be Westboro Baptist members — who were allegedly harmed by Vogel's bear repellent, a Mace-like chemical that burned their eyes, turned their stomachs and sent several to the hospital.

“In no way did he want to take away from the honor of Sgt. Bock, the solemn occasion for his family,” Marlene Vogel says. “But he was not thinking clearly. All he saw in his mind were those protesters when he got off the ship.”

Vogel is a Creighton graduate, a father of four, a retired vice president of a telemarketing firm and a longtime member of a veterans group that aids families of Marines killed or wounded in combat.

He is also a longtime victim of post-traumatic stress disorder, his wife and his attorney said Monday. He is spooked by loud noises. He has long suffered nightmares — his children, when young, grew used to hearing him call in artillery and scream for help while asleep.

Vogel's PTSD has gotten worse in recent years, despite the treatment he has received at Omaha's VA Medical Center, his wife says. He steers conversations toward the war, relating all current issues, big and small, back to Vietnam, where he was wounded and saw friends die.

“It's like he can't get Vietnam off his mind,” said his wife, a part-time registered nurse at the VA Medical Center. Post-traumatic stress disorder, “is hard to describe … it kind of invades your whole being.”

Vogel's Vietnam past and the present apparently slammed into each other Saturday, when the veteran allegedly sprayed people crowded around the Westboro protesters.

Members of Westboro Baptist, a church in Topeka, Kan., have a history of provoking anger with anti-gay signs and inflammatory rhetoric. For several years, the group has picketed military funerals, loudly proclaiming its message that American servicemen deserve to die because of the country's acceptance of homosexuality.

That's what they were doing in Omaha on Saturday — approximately 20 Westboro members, including leader Shirley Phelps-Roper, stood near the intersection of 72nd and Cass Streets, shaking signs and screaming.

A loosely organized group of counterprotesters surrounded the Westboro members, waving flags, chanting and singing songs. The goal: Drown out the Westboro voices so Sgt. Bock's family and friends couldn't hear them as they entered the nearby First United Methodist Church for the Marine's funeral, said Kathy McKenna, one of the counterprotesters.

Bock, a 26-year-old husband and father of a 3-year-old, was killed Aug. 13 in Afghanistan.

Video and eyewitness accounts show that the protesters and counterprotesters were clustered close together, yelling at one another, when a man identified as Vogel drove by and sprayed bear repellent over the top of his pickup truck and into the crowd.

McKenna felt her throat tighten. She couldn't breathe. She saw others running, so she ran, too, stopping when she saw another counterprotester writhing on the ground, liquid running from her mouth and nose.

McKenna, who declined to go to a hospital that day, said she still felt ill more than 48 hours later.

“I don't care whose side you are on, you just don't do that sort of thing,” she said. “We would all love to do something like that (to Westboro protesters), but you cannot act on it.”

Despite her lingering illness, McKenna said, having the chemical shot into her face wasn't the worst thing that happened to her that day. She said the words yelled by the Westboro members will stick with her far longer than the pepper spray.

“That Marine gave her the right to stand on that street corner, and she thanks him with venom,” McKenna said, referring to servicemembers who die to protect American freedoms. The spray “was a short-lived assault. Hers is an assault on society.”

The Westboro protesters weren't harmed by the spray, said Phelps-Roper. Police and eyewitnesses reported that some shielded their faces with their signs. Others said Phelps-Roper quickly jumped into a van that pulled up and left.

Phelps-Roper had a different explanation.

“The Lord our God delivered us,” she said Saturday.

Vogel appeared in Douglas County court on Tuesday afternoon, where a judge set $5,000 bail. Vogel posted 10 percent of that amount, $500, and was released later in the day.

Glenn Shapiro, Vogel's lawyer, said his client has already apologized to a police officer he allegedly sprayed during the attack and wants to apologize to other people harmed by the spray.

Shapiro said he has heard from Marine veterans who want to vouch for Vogel's character at any court hearings.

“In the eyes of the law this is a criminal act, and we're not encouraging anyone to follow in his footsteps,” Shapiro said. “But I think people clearly understand why this occurred, what he did and why he did it.”

Marlene Vogel is left to grapple with the two images of her husband — a man she describes as a law-abiding and upstanding member of the community and the man currently sitting in jail suspected of misdemeanor assault and one count of child neglect because his grandson was riding with him.

A felony assault charge for allegedly spraying a police officer has been dropped, Shapiro said.

Vogel has grown agitated after attending other military funerals, his wife said, so much so that she hoped he had forgotten about Bock's funeral when he drove to a family cabin near Scribner, Neb., at week's end. She next heard from him about 10 a.m. Saturday, when he called to tell her he had been arrested.

Marlene Vogel thought her husband was pulling a practical joke on her and asked to speak to the arresting officer.

“Even if he's feeling very upset about the Westboro Baptist Church and their placards and signs and the disruption, he didn't even think about the disruption his actions caused at the funeral,” Marlene Vogel said Monday.

“PTSD is very real, very real. He knows it, and all our family and friends know it,” she said. “Still … that is not like George. That's not something he'd ever do.”

World-Herald staff writers Rick Ruggles and Joseph Brennan contributed to this report.

Contact the writer:

444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com

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